In 2017, I invited the art critic Margaret Hawkins to my studio, for a screening of a film about my work. I thought Margaret might be willing to write an essay about the central motif in my work at that time: trucks. Rather than accepting a commission to write the essay, she suggested I write it myself. I could hire her as a writing coach. For eight years, Margaret sent me prompts that lead me to write various stories and essays. I have yet to write one about my truck motif, but I’ve written quite a few other pieces. Here is a recent prompt, and my response:
1. Make a list of seven current obsessions, things you think about a lot. These obsessions should be abstractions or concepts or ideas, not specific things (i.e. money or beauty, not potato chips or the TV show White Lotus).
2. Choose one that feels juicy.
3. Write 3 scenes about that subject.
4. Write 3 ideas about that subject.
5. Write 3 facts about that subject.
6. Write 3 questions about that subject.
Allow each item to expand as it needs to. They may go on and on or may be single sentences. When you finish #6, you may be done. If not, combine these as you see fit into an essay or story. You may reorder them, but consider allowing the order in which they come to mind to stand.
I skipped step one. For step two, I chose the juicy subject of Artists’ Statements and Related Irritants.
Three Scenes About Artist’s Statements
Scene One: Regarding Artists’ Statements
I’ve been asked to loan work for a group exhibition. I like being invited to show with other artists, makes me feel part of something. The show is at a loft-style gallery, in an industrial byway. A younger, less well exhibited friend of mine, has asked me to participate with him. Participating has a hidden price: participation in anything is always a bigger drain on my time and energy than I first envision. Often, after the initial pleasure in having been invited recedes, regret slowly grows. In this case, I belatedly find out that I’m responsible for shipping, both ways. This requires more time, resources and money than I’d anticipated.
In the sixth email from the gallery, providing additional details, I’m asked to submit a CV. Why doesn’t the gallery just pull it off the internet? I drop what I’m doing, which is probably painting, and hunt around on my computer to find one that’s been updated. It not only has to be recent, but it can’t be too long, or too short.
I have a recently prepared 2 pager, and an older 12 pager, but not a 3 to 4 pager. I spend hours making one that’s just right, because working on a computer alerts me to other urgent tasks. Ignoring them might lead to interpersonal catastrophes.
When the work is shipped and the CV submitted, with a week to go before the show, I realize I’m expected to attend the opening. I cancel other plans I’d made for the evening and arrange to meet my friend, the one who’d invited me to participate in this show, at Cozy’s Corner, a bar known for cheap whiskey and the occasional gunfight. Cozy’s has the added benefit of being next to the gallery. We’ll have a few minutes to enjoy a drink and some private conversation before joining the crowd at the gallery.
Three days before the show opens, my phone signals an incoming call. It’s the gallery calling.
“Where’s your artists statement?”
“I sent my 3 to 4 page CV. What more could you want?”
“Your Artist’s Statement!”
I thought to myself, “My work is my statement. That’s why I make it: to make a statement.”
To the demanding gallerist, I reply that I’ll try to find something.
After I hang up, my youngest kid, also an artist, drops by my studio. I vent. I’m kidsplained that today’s artist explains his work in the form of a statement in order to place it in the context of the contemporary art scene.
“It’s to help the audience enter and relate to your work.”
In fifteen minutes, my helpful child has written a statement for me and it’s sent off.
Scene Two: Regarding Artists’ Statements
My studio was flourishing at the end of the 20th Century. I was always busy making new work and exhibiting. The office work and shipping took as much time as the creative work.
I was in a men’s group, all artists, that met once a month. Addressing my sense of being overwhelmed by the combination of career demands and raising kids, two men, both of whom taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, suggested I hire a student intern.
I posted a “wanted” notice, through the office of internship management, and soon was notified that Henry would be coming to my studio. On the agreed upon day, a tall young man, named Henry, arrived. We chatted a while. I learned he’d lived in NYC before attending SAIC. After a polite introductory conversation, I asked Henry to assemble a set of stretcher bars, cut enough canvas off a roll to fit, stretch it, and finally, to prime it, with gesso.
He stated that he didn’t know what stretcher bars were and had no idea how to do any of the tasks I listed.
I asked him what he had learned so far at school. He said he’d had a course on how to write an artist’s statement and had received high marks.
Scene Three: Regarding Artists’ Statements
Take five. I’m skipping this part.
Three Ideas about Artists’ Statements
Idea Number One
Someone should write the history and evolution of Artists’ Statements. The team that did Lascaux….either they didn’t write one or it didn’t get saved. Did Michaelangelo write one? I think Van Gogh wrote a lot of letters, so maybe those count, except the letters were to his brother and weren’t meant to be put out at the director’s desk in a gallery, along with his show, which he never had anyway. Rothko had a lot to say about capitalism, but I don’t think that counts as an artist statement, since his paintings weren’t about the dichotomy between capitalism and marxism. Or were they?
Idea Number Two
A short time ago, an arts writer could still make serious money providing artists’ statement services. An artist could pay for it, but otherwise be un-involved. The writer reviewed the artist’s work, reflected on intentions and methods, and using metaphors and poetic license, wrote an impressive statement. The bus has left the depot on this one. Now, Synthetic Intelligence can serve up a credible piece for free.
Idea Number Three
Some artists, after producing a body of work, compose an interpretive catalog essay serving up their visual language on a platter of rigatoni academica. Don’t bother looking up rigatoni. It means something short and hollow. The essay will mask the work’s fatal flaw: it doesn’t convey its own meaning.
Other artists, embarking on a new body of work, write their statement first, convinced the envisioned work will illustrate their statement. Their statement will be used in grant applications, seeking money to produce the work. If no money shows up, the statement will be sent to a variety of galleries and museums in order to produce an invitation for a show. If there’s no invitation to exhibit the work, the artist concludes that there’s no need to make it.
The artist’s energy will then be turned to writing a new statement, hoping for a better outcome. This cycle will be repeated until an exhibition or a grant is arranged. Only at this point will the artist put their brushes to work.
Three Facts: Regarding Artists’ Statements
One: They are very popular with galleries. Why? It saves the gallery director the effort of explaining the work to clients.
Two: They are useful to Art-Writers, some of whom take them at face value. Others compare and contrast the statement to the Art-Writer’s own interpretation of the work. Either way, it’s a helpful prompt.
Three: Once a collector has hung a work at home, the artist’s statement can be quoted at dinner parties to explain the new work to guests.
Three Questions: Regarding Artists’ Statements
One: Will the demand for these statements fade? What changes in the public world of culture would diminish interest in them?
Two: Do artist statements change the way artists understand their own work? Do artists understand their own work? Does it matter?
Three: Is the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty relevant to the consideration of artist statements. Can artists observe their work without both themselves and their work being altered?
Margaret’s directions continued with this directive: When you finish #6, you may be done. If not, combine these as you see fit in an essay or story.
In the 1950’s, art and artists were under attack. Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy was claiming that American artists were all in league with the Soviet Union, and that this was a threat to the American Way of Life. He was correct that many artists, in the first half of the 20th century, were left wingers of one sort or another, including communists. He was wrong in thinking they were a threat to the country. McCarthy was the threat to our country. Much like earlier periods in American history, and as during the reign of The Third Reich, and under Stalin, avant-garde art felt threatening to people who wielded power because it challenged their nationalistic myths.
Independent art schools were in danger of being shut down by powerful fear mongers. Universities saw an opportunity to enhance their revenues, providing safe harbor to these schools by acquiring them. Many independent art schools were tempted to bite the apple, in order to protect their academic freedom. The idea of secure employment was attractive too. Ben Shahn wrote about this in The Shape of Content. The devil in the deal was that visual language became subservient to word based language.
Since the earliest days of the visual arts, the way a painting was made—the choice of colors, shape, sizes— all the elements of design, or visual language, formed the message of the artist to other artists, their ultimate audience. People who commissioned an artist to memorialize an event or tell a story were pleased when they could see that story in the painting’s images. For the artist, what the painting portrayed, say a barn in a field, was not the primary message.The way the painting was made was. Under the influence of academia, the primary message was no longer to be found in either the image or the way it was created. It came to be found not in the work itself but in the Artist’s Statement.
In order to teach art in an accredited institution, one has to study and write about art history. In studio classes, an art student needs to learn how to talk about the process of making art and the meaning of that process. Less and less often are students left alone with the time and silence to make art without words. Since the process of drawing, painting, or making sculpture requires the use of the right side of the brain and talking and writing about it requires the left side, it’s rare that an artist’s statement says anything useful about their work.
My Artist’s Statement
After completing Margaret’s assignment, I should really write an artist’s statement, having learned so much on the subject. Instead, I’ll leave my statement to your imagination. I need to get back to working on the right side of my brain!